The Southwest Florida Water Management District acquires land to protect and manage the water resources. The acquisitions fulfill a variety of needs such as reducing the risk of flooding, protecting and improving water quality, developing water supplies, protecting areas where rainfall recharges or replenishes water sources, restoring and managing uplands, and protecting wetland systems, such as headwater swamps and river floodplains.

All of these lands serve to protect and restore natural systems. The District’s usage of public lands to achieve water resource goals can be divided into two processes: land acquisition and land management.

Land Acquisition

The District must first determine what lands should be identified for acquisition. Two statewide programs guide the District’s land acquisition: the Water Management Lands Trust Fund (commonly known as Save Our Rivers or SOR), and Florida Forever. These programs target the protection of natural resources at the regional level. Areas essential to protect water supplies and other lands necessary for water management purposes qualify for acquisition.

The Florida Forever program, created by the Florida Legislature in 1999, will provide $300 million annually for 10 years. Thirty-five percent, or $105 million annually, will be allocated to the water management districts for land acquisition, Surface Water Improvement and Management projects, water resource development, water supply development and restoration. At least 50 percent of the water management district allocation must be spent on land acquisition. Of the $105 million provided annually to water management districts, the Southwest Florida Water Management District will receive approximately $26 million.

The District utilizes two types of acquisition: fee simple and less-than-fee simple. Fee simple is the outright purchase of lands that have sensitive natural resources or complex management needs. Less-than-fee simple is the purchase of limited property rights. In other words, the District acquires the right to conserve and protect resources on the property at a lesser cost to taxpayers, while keeping the land in private ownership and on the tax rolls. This means protection of more land using less funds. However, land acquired through less-than-fee usually doesn’t allow for public access. The Legislature has directed water management districts to use the less-than-fee simple method on at least two purchases per year.

The District has protected through fee simple and less-than-fee simple more than 370,000 acres of public land, most of which were purchased through the SOR or Preservation 2000 (P2000) programs. P2000 was the predecessor of Florida Forever. More than 95 percent of the land the District has purchased in fee simple is open for passive recreational activities such as hiking, canoeing, horseback riding, backpacking, camping or picnicking. For more information on District-managed lands, call 1-800-423-1476 (FL only) for a free copy of the “Recreational Guide to Southwest Florida Water Management District Lands,” or visit the District’s website, WaterMatters.org/recreation.

Each year, the water management districts are required to submit a five-year plan of acquisition for SOR and P2000 property with the President of the Florida Senate, the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection. The 2001 Five-Year Plan identifies over 400,000 acres for potential purchase and another 135,000 for future evaluation of acquisitions.

Land Management

Once property is acquired, a management plan is developed and implemented. Management plans must be consistent with a property’s primary purpose for acquisition. When determining what types of public recreational activities will be allowed on public lands, the activities are judged by the potential impacts to the resources and the compatibility of competing uses. The goal of the District is to make its public lands available to as broad a range of activities as are consistent with purposes for which the lands were acquired.

Properly managing lands is more than just determining what types of public recreational activities to allow. In June and July of 1998, lightning strikes sparked wildfires that consumed nearly 500,000 acres in Florida, threatening natural habitats, burning homes, and causing mass evacuations. A drier than normal summer, combined with years of unchecked vegetative growth, formed the perfect conditions for fires to burn out of control. During that period, 10 wildfires burned nearly 600 acres of District land, but the fires remained relatively minor as a result of the District’s prescribed burning program. A wildfire burned approximately 245 acres on the District’s Starkey tract in Pasco County, while a fire on nearby property, which had not burned for at least 10 years, consumed approximately 1,000 acres, destroying hundreds of acres of pre-commercial planted pine trees.

Prior to the urbanization of Florida, natural lightning fires burned regularly over the landscape. Natural systems have adapted to fire and are dependent upon fire, which stimulates flowering and seed production, controls certain insects and diseases harmful to forest resources, and maintains the natural diversity and balance of plant life, among other benefits. Widespread natural fires cannot be allowed to burn as they once did; so prescribed burning is the most important tool in managing these natural systems.

Prescribed burning is applying fire to the landscape, under controlled conditions, to reap the benefits of the natural fires, including reducing build-up of fuel, i.e., vegetation that can cause damaging, even catastrophic wildfires. The District conducted prescribed burns on 12,000 acres of land in Fiscal Year 2000 to mimic these natural fire regimes.

Prescribed burning is just one of the methods used by the District to preserve, protect and restore natural ecosystems. Exotic plant management also protects natural systems. The District works with other government agencies, water management districts and the university system to control invasive exotic plant species. Exotic plants pose a threat to Florida’s natural systems by destroying habitats, reducing wildlife food sources and altering fire and drainage patterns.

According to the District’s statutory mandates, District-owned lands shall be managed and maintained in such a way as to ensure a balance between public access, general public recreational purposes, and restoration and protection of their natural state and condition. Multiple uses such as silviculture (timber management), cattle grazing and haying can provide environmentally acceptable means for generating revenue to offset management costs.

The District manages a sustainable resource — planted pine timber — to generate revenue that supplements land management funding. Permanent timber areas are located on previously altered sites, such as fallow agricultural fields. Planted pines in natural areas are converted to their natural density and managed as natural pine lands thereafter. Some lands the District manages were previously used for cattle grazing or hay production. On many occasions, these agricultural lands will remain in the same use after District purchase, thereby providing a valuable source of revenue that offsets management costs.

When large parcels are acquired by the District, often portions of the land have been altered from their natural state by former land-use practices. These practices may include logging for timber revenue, and land clearing or draining for agricultural or cattle grazing uses. The District’s restoration program entails the use of various techniques to return an altered ecosystem to its naturally functioning state. These techniques include planting of trees and/or ground-cover vegetation, mechanical treatments to manipulate existing natural vegetation or altered drainage patterns, and prescribed burning. Lands that receive high priority for restoration in the coming years will be fallow pasture and former agricultural fields. Currently, there are approximately 6,000 acres of such sites on District-managed lands.

Unlike cut-over flatwoods where only the overstory component of the system has been removed, improved pastures are formerly upland communities upon which the entire system has been converted to unnatural, often exotic, vegetation. Thus, reintroduction of not only the tree canopy, but also the ground-cover vegetation is needed to return the site to a likeness of its former natural state. There has been little work done statewide in this type of “whole system” restoration, and research into alternatives for this type of restoration is sketchy.

The District has cooperated with the Florida Department of Transportation to complete two pasture restoration projects totaling approximately 400 acres. Several other large pasture restoration projects are scheduled for restoration in the next 10 years.

Sand scrub will be another priority for restoration in the coming years. This community, which supports more endemic wildlife species than any other in Florida, is becoming increasingly rare because of residential and agricultural development. The District has acquired several landholdings, which contain remnant scrub communities, that support a number of endangered species. Where prescribed burning is not sufficient to restore altered scrub habitats, mechanical treatments, followed by burning, are being used successfully on District-managed lands.

By acquiring environmentally important lands, the District is helping to preserve the natural systems and protect the water resources within its boundaries.

August 2001

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